A Junior Cycle pupil in Co Galway got quite the surprise this week when a poem written by his mother, and inspired by him, came up in the English paper during this year’s State exams. Envoi in Chalk, written by Emily Cullen, a poet in residence at the University of Limerick, appeared in section D of the higher-level English examination paper. Chosen as Poem of the Week in The Irish Times in December 2019, it was inspired by her son, Lee Davison, now 15, who sat the exam at Coláiste Éinde in Salthill. Cullen said when she collected her son from school after the exam on Wednesday he looked “very happy”. “He said, ‘Mam, it went great. You won’t believe it, but the poem you wrote about me came up. The one about the chalk’. It was just a surreal moment, priceless really,” she said. Lee was not sure whether to reveal the poem’s origins when answering the question. “He decided that the person marking his paper might not believe him, so he answered in the third person,” Cullen said. Envoi in Chalk was written in 2019 by the poet when her mother was still alive but in hospital. The Co Leitrim native said she took inspiration from her son, who was then aged eight. Cullen recalled how she had beckoned Lee in for dinner at their Rahoon home when she saw he had written a message, “The world is great”, with chalk on a pavement. “I just thought, ‘Wow’. I was having one of those days where nothing was going right. I came in and the poem wrote itself. They’re very rare because most poems take a good bit of revising and redrafting, but that just came out,” she said. After the exam, Coláiste Éinde deputy principal Seamus Kelly said it was a “lovely coincidence”. “The message Lee chalked on the pavement and the message of the poem is so positive and life-affirming, a young boy’s view of the world that gives us all a lift,” he said. Cullen did not know her poem – which featured in her third poetry collection, Conditional Perfect, by Doire Press – would appear in the Junior Certificate exam. It was “an incredible feeling” to learn it featured on the paper, she said. “It’s a poem that has a bright message in these dark times and it’s all thanks to Lee.” Envoi in chalk by Emily CullenI’m calling my son from the end of the estatewhen my eye snags on green pastel words. He has chalked on the pavement:The world is greatThis is just the line I need to read,my mother in hospital, my shoulder inflamed,future employment uncertain,Earth eyeballing Armageddon.Yet how right, his perception.He bolts up on his yellow scooter,eight-year old fringe quiffed with gel,on the cusp of the age of cool.